Korean Speakers ITP

[Tequila Sunrise]

I learned the alfabet during a short stay in Daejeon, but hardly more.

If anyone knows more, I'd appreciate some help: my instructor told me that the movements of Yul-Gok, my new taekwondo form, make the character for 'scholar' when seen from a bird's-eye-view. Problem is, as far as I know, no Korean words use just one character -- they are always composed of at least two characters.

So I mentioned this to my instructor, who knows less Korean than I do -- he's just repeating what his instructor told him years ago. Now he wants to know what the deal is with the Korean word 'scholar' too, but I don't know enough to work it out.

Anyway, cheers!

[rakkoon]

My Korean buddy Yi-Google says the same but that doesn't prove a lot.



YUL-GOK is the pseudonym of a great philosopher and scholar Yi l (1536-1584)
nicknamed the "Confucius of Korea" The 38 movements of this pattern refer to his birthplace on 38 latitude and the diagram represents "scholar".

For instance here (http://smallerdemon.com/tkd/green%20belt%20forms/YUL-GOK.pdf)

[Winter_Wolf]

(Preface: I am vaguely familiar with Hangul, but intimately familiar with written Japanese and Chinese.)

Actually your instructor is right. A fact that most people seem to gloss over or be outright unaware of is that Chinese is the base for most of the words in written Japanese and Korean. There is indeed a single character that means 'scholar', pronounced shi 士 (if that's garbled, try setting your browser to detect simplified Chinese) in Chinese. Not speaking Korean, I couldn't tell you how it would be pronounced in that language, but upon opening the link in rakkoon's post, I immediately recognized the character based on the diagram.

Bit of trivia: 士 are protectors of the king in Chinese chess. (I guess they advise him to get the hell out of the way when an enemy piece threatens.:smallwink:)

[Tequila Sunrise]

(Preface: I am vaguely familiar with Hangul, but intimately familiar with written Japanese and Chinese.)

Actually your instructor is right. A fact that most people seem to gloss over or be outright unaware of is that Chinese is the base for most of the words in written Japanese and Korean. There is indeed a single character that means 'scholar', pronounced shi 士 (if that's garbled, try setting your browser to detect simplified Chinese) in Chinese. Not speaking Korean, I couldn't tell you how it would be pronounced in that language, but upon opening the link in rakkoon's post, I immediately recognized the character based on the diagram.

Bit of trivia: 士 are protectors of the king in Chinese chess. (I guess they advise him to get the hell out of the way when an enemy piece threatens.:smallwink:)
Thanks, White Wolf. I did know that Chinese is the basis for written Korean, but hadn't considered such a direct link in this case.

PS: There's a good chance that koreans pronounce 'shi' just as you wrote it -- those two characters are a pretty common pair in korean. Useless trivia: koreans never use S and then the long E, so English speaking koreans often say 'she' when they mean 'see.' Very frustrating.

[Trog]

>.> I can count to 10 in Korean... and that's about it as that's all I verbally retained from my Tae Kwon Do lessons as a kid. =/

[Tequila Sunrise]

>.> I can count to 10 in Korean... and that's about it as that's all I verbally retained from my Tae Kwon Do lessons as a kid. =/
Heh, I can do that and ask "Namjacheengu eesayo?" (Do you have a boyfriend?) And that's about it.

It's funny, I hated high school Spanish but now that I'm out of school I've gotten really interested in languages.

[13_CBS]

Chinese forming the basis of modern Hangul? Hrm...:smallconfused:

The vocabulary, certainly: a huge portion of modern Korean words have roots in Chinese. But Chinese script by itself wasn't the only inspiration for Korean: I've heard that some sort of Mongolian script (I forget the name) was involved in its making.


As for your problem...some Koreans do like to use Chinese script for the sake of decorum or prestige, the same way that some Westerners like to use Latin for certain things. In that case, yes, "Korean" can have 1 character.